FREDERIC RZEWSKI (b.1938): De Profundis for Speaking Pianist, Second Hand, or Alone at Last for Piano Left Hand, Fantasia.

Description: One of the most exciting aspects of Rzewski's encyclopaedic piano output, informed by his own extraordinary pianism, is the ease with which he casually switches styles within a piece, while maintaining a sense of unity throughout and making radically divergent methods sound equally idiomatic for the instrument. Harmonically sumptuous neoromantic passages rub shoulders with frank atonality, hints of minimalism collide with extravagant complexicist textures, or spiky modernism happily coexists with unironic lyricism. This is achieved in both the lively Fantasia, with its quicksilver changes of mood, and even more remarkably, in the set of six virtuosic etudes for left hand alone (with the great title). De Profundis, his shattering setting of Oscar Wilde's text, a multimedia extravaganza for solo pianist, throws even more into the mix, requiring the soloist to narrate, sing, play both the piano and his own body as percussion instruments, and so on, while the piano part runs the gamut from baroque through romantic to avant garde. Robert Satterlee (piano).